The Frozen Blueberry E. coli Outbreak Is Over: 17 Sick, 6 Hospitalized, No Deaths Counted. The Recalled Bags Are Dated Into 2028

On Monday, September 21, the CDC closed its investigation into the E. coli outbreak linked to frozen organic blueberries, and the FDA called its own work complete. The final count is 17 people sick in Florida and Georgia, six hospitalized and no deaths reported, with illnesses that began between May 11 and August 2. The strain was E. coli O145:H28. The berries were traced to a Chilean supplier, Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur S.A., and were sold as Publix’s GreenWise organic frozen blueberries and mixed berries and, in one lot, as Walmart’s Great Value Organic Triple Berry Blend.

The part that is not over is in people’s freezers. The FDA notes that the recalled products carry “Best By” dates ending in 2028, and freezing does not kill E. coli; it holds it. Here are the exact bags and codes, and why the freezer matters.

The final countSeventeen people, two states, one strain

The outbreak surfaced on July 1, when the Florida Department of Health told federal partners about a cluster of O145 infections; Publix says it had already pulled the berries from sale at the end of June. At the first public notice on July 6 the count was 12 people and four hospitalizations. By September 3 it was 17 and six, and it did not move again. CDC’s final update carries the same 17 and six, which is 35 percent of the people with information available. The people who fell ill ranged in age from 2 to 88.

The link to the berries rests on three kinds of evidence. Interviews: 11 of the 13 people asked about the week before they fell ill had eaten frozen blueberries, 85 percent, against 24 percent of respondents in CDC’s FoodNet population survey. Genetics: whole genome sequencing showed the patients’ bacteria were closely related. Traceback: the FDA followed the berries to the Chilean firm. The only positive product result the agencies report came from the retailer: Publix tested its own GreenWise frozen blueberries and one sample carried the outbreak strain, while every sample the FDA collected in the US was negative. The FDA inspected the supplier remotely and placed it on Import Alert 99-35, so its frozen blueberries “may be detained without physical examination” at the border.

Check your freezerThe bags, the codes and the 2028 dates

The recall grew in three steps: a single supplier lot of GreenWise Organic IQF Blueberries on July 3; every lot of Publix’s GreenWise frozen whole blueberries and whole mixed berries, in both sizes, on July 29; and one lot of Walmart’s Great Value blend on September 2, sold, after a September 11 correction, at Walmart stores in 26 states and Puerto Rico.

Two details matter at the freezer door. For the GreenWise bags the recall covers all lots, so a matching UPC is enough. For the Walmart blend only one lot is recalled, so the code printed on the front is what to check; the supplier says no illnesses have been tied to that product and that the recall was a precaution based on traceback from the earlier one. If you find a match, CDC’s advice is short: “Do not eat any recalled frozen berries. Throw them away or return them to where you bought them.” Both notices say the store will give a full refund. We log recalls like this one on our gut health recall tracker.

What the count coversSeventeen is a floor

An outbreak count is a list of people whose illness was confirmed by a laboratory and matched, by sequencing, to the outbreak strain. It leaves out everyone who was never tested, and CDC says so plainly: “The true number of sick people in this outbreak was likely much higher than the number reported,” because many people recover without medical care. Nor did any of CDC’s three updates publish a figure for hemolytic uremic syndrome, the kidney complication this kind of E. coli can cause.

A wrongful-death lawsuit filed last week in Pinellas County, Florida, alleges that a Largo woman died in June after eating GreenWise frozen blueberries bought at Publix, the Tampa Bay Times reported; the claims have not been tested in court, the named defendants, Publix and the distributor Quirch Foods, had not responded to the paper’s requests for comment, and neither CDC’s pages nor the published reports say whether she was among the 17 counted cases.

Neither agency’s page says how the fruit became contaminated. The FDA, which in July flagged “concerns about at least one other lot of blueberries” used in other GreenWise products, now calls its investigation complete.

Why frozen berriesFreezing keeps berries. It does not clean them

Frozen berries are raw fruit, often eaten straight from the bag in smoothies and yogurt bowls with no cooking step between the field and the spoon. The USDA’s food-safety service is precise about what the freezer does: freezing to 0 °F “inactivates any microbes,” but “once thawed, however, these microbes can again become active.” In a UC Davis study, E. coli O157:H7 on sliced strawberries held at −20 °C fell by 0.7 to 2.2 log units over 30 days, roughly 80 to 99 percent by our arithmetic, and the authors concluded it “can survive in frozen strawberries for periods of greater than 1 month.” Strawberries are not blueberries and O157 is not O145, but the principle is the USDA’s: the freezer is a pause button.

Historically, the germ in frozen-berry outbreaks has been a virus. The FDA links hepatitis A and norovirus outbreaks to fresh and frozen berries in the US and worldwide, and says those reported since 1997 involved imported fruit. The largest were European: nearly 11,000 norovirus cases in Germany in 2012, traced to one lot of frozen strawberries from China (Bernard, 2014), and 1,589 hepatitis A cases across Europe in 2013 and 2014, 70 percent of them hospitalized, tied to mixed frozen berries (Severi, 2015). A review of 32 frozen-berry events in the EU from 1983 to 2013 found norovirus, hepatitis A and Shigella sonnei, and no E. coli (Tavoschi, 2015). In the US, FDA testing of 1,558 samples of frozen strawberries, raspberries and blackberries from 2018 to 2023 found either virus in fewer than 1 percent of each; blueberries were not in that survey. During the European hepatitis A outbreak, the public there was advised to heat-treat berries. For this outbreak, the FDA’s advice is not to cook the recalled bags; it is not to eat them at all.

Know the signsWhat O145:H28 means

The name is an address, not a severity grade: the “O” number identifies the strain’s somatic, or body, antigen and the “H” number its flagellar antigen (Lim, 2010). The category matters more. Every recall notice in this outbreak describes O145 as a Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, or STEC, the group CDC calls “the most common cause of hemolytic uremic syndrome.” O157:H7 is the STEC most people know. In CDC’s FoodNet data for 2000 to 2010, O145 ranked sixth among the non-O157 serogroups, at 4 percent of those infections, and non-O157 infections were on average less severe than O157, though that varied by serogroup.

Per CDC, STEC symptoms usually start three to four days after swallowing the bacteria: severe stomach cramps, diarrhea that is often bloody, and vomiting. Most people recover without treatment in five to seven days. Some develop HUS, which CDC says is most common in children under 5; its signs include peeing less often, losing the pink color in the cheeks and inside the lower eyelids, and unusual tiredness. CDC’s final update notes that antibiotics are not recommended for STEC infections. “Over” means no new illnesses are being tied to these berries; the symptoms are still worth knowing because not every bag is gone. The FDA’s advice is to contact a health care provider if you ate the recalled berries and have symptoms that resemble an E. coli infection.

The blueberry close-out ends a crowded summer of outbreak notices: CDC also closed the lettuce Cyclospora outbreak on September 11 and the Midwest Poultry egg outbreak on September 3. Publix, Walmart, Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur and Quirch Foods had no involvement in this article. It is educational, describes what the cited agency pages, recall notices and studies say, and is not medical advice.